Watson Job Aid Example 4 - NUR 405

Careful study of the job-aid model attached to this document provides guidelines for best practices care based upon the Jean Watson Theory and matrix of care. It also details how to apply the goals of care while carefully integrating medical service delivery with human basic needs, spiritual, emotional, and empathic needs of patients and families. Utilizing a holistic approach to care helps to engage the patient into the process as a willing and compliant participant because he or she feels valued. This makes the model useful for emergency and community health nursing. Review of Jean Watson’s theory provides a basic understanding of its subparts (caritas) and their relationship to nursing practice while presenting an overarching model for best care practice. Further discussion will emphasize how the knowledge can be implemented within individual departments, specifically the Emergency Department, and how this knowledge can be dispersed and applied with the local public health departments as a basis for community health nursing.

Jean Watson’s approach to nursing is very holistic in nature reaching to the philosophical, moral and ethical principles of humanity. Her theory takes into account the whole person and is disseminated into groups that she calls “carative processes.” Considerations include basic human needs for physical care and expand to include validation and support, emotional and spiritual needs, and the collaborative value of patient and family engagement into the care process. Her theory suggests that by utilizing patient and family values and strengths already known to them, compliance and outcomes will be very naturally and positively enhanced.